Behind the Bike - Knolly's New Fugitive

Aluminum hasn't been thought of as the premium frame material since, well, that lightweight but expensive black stuff took over the top spot a few decades ago. But is now the time for high-end aluminum to make a comeback? Knolly believes so, with founder Noel Buckley (pictured below holding one of his first frames) saying, ''We think we can build a better bike out of aluminum than you can with a cost-value carbon frame.'' Buckley is talking about his new Fugitive, a 120mm to 135mm-travel 29er that's had reliability put above whatever the scale says.

I sat down with Buckley to talk aluminum, carbon, and Knolly's first new bike in two years that also happens to be the BC company's first 29er.

It's hard to believe that the Fugitive is Knolly's first big-wheeler, and while Buckley readily admits that he pretty much has to have one in the catalog, he cites the wholesale shift to 27.5'' wheels as one of the reasons that it's taken this long to get a 29er up and running. ''For small companies like us, the move to 27.5 was pretty big,'' he replied before pointing out that his relatively modest operation has limited resources compared to many other brands, but that wasn't the only reason.

''And I just wasn't stoked on 29ers at the time because, frankly, the geometries were terrible up until maybe the last year or so. And I think that with the acceptance of what we've always done,'' he explained while pointing at the Fugitive's drastically offset seat tube, ''is absolutely critical to be making a 29er work correctly.''




And it's also a step that took two full years to make, which is roughly an eon in our strange little cycling world where it seems to be a constant race to debut something - anything - shiny and fresh. I'm no small business expert, but I'm pretty sure that two years without any fresh offerings isn't a helpful thing, and Buckley puts a lot of credit on Knolly's fans for sticking around: ''Just imagine not having a new product for two years; nothing cool, and telling our existing customer base, who are all very loyal, 'Just wait, it's all gonna be good in 2019.' That trust was there. That's probably our biggest asset, our customer base who know that, yes, when it comes out, it's going to be f*cking good.''

''There so much new stuff on this bike, from a development standpoint, for our company. It's the single biggest step we've ever made as a company. Way more than taking on the Warden Carbon,'' explained Buckley.

The Fugitive isn't just an important bike for Knolly because of its long gestation, but also because it's constructed from the building blocks that will form the company's fifth-generation platform. Previously, Buckley would focus on a single bike, made for a single purpose, and see it through to production before moving onto the next project. That approach doesn't make sense anymore fiscally or time-wise.


''We developed this as a platform for what's ultimately going to become a new model range. So that huge cost will start to amortize itself over those frames. And on top of that, the industrial design was done here and, I don't know if you agree or not, but in my opinion, it's by far the best we've ever done.'' The exasperation has been replaced with a beaming smile.




But is the world ready - again - for high-end aluminum bikes? Or is the consensus that carbon is the only real option if you want a dream machine? Buckley and Paul Nash, Knolly's General Manager, believe that there's not only room for both, but also that their aluminum frames are better all around than a relatively inexpensive carbon model. ''We've pushed the boundaries of the quality of aluminum frames so that if you don't have to have carbon, and you look at the bike in terms of ride quality and manufacturing quality, then ours wins out over a low-end carbon frame,'' Nash said in response to that question. ''The titanium fasters, the quality of the bearings, the quality of the bushings, even the quality of the pieces used on this frame, they're all part of the package.''

''The seat tube is one of the most complicated tubes that we've ever made. It's a radically hydroformed tube that took about four attempts for the bender to get it because it's just so extreme,'' added Buckley.




But a carbon frame is surely going to be lighter, right? And as much as some of us talk about weight not being a factor, I'd argue that it's at least part of the equation for a lot of riders.

''A carbon frame is approximately three-quarters of a pound to a pound less than an alloy frame, depending how it's made and whether they do or don't cut any corners. But then you buy some brands that have 'premium carbon' and less expensive carbon; if you buy the lesser carbon frame it's actually heavier,'' countered Buckley.


''We're like 'Hey, we'll be happy if it's mid-pack in weight, carbon-wise,' but we want it to be durable, so we set some targets that were a fraction of what the industry thinks is okay for failure rates. It won't be as good as alloy; I don't care what anyone tells you,'' he went on to say of his own carbon machine.

The Fugitive looks every bit the Knolly that it is - the FOURby4 suspension ensures that - but it's also a much swoopier, flowing layout that its predecessors, largely due to more attention to the industrial design side of things. ''I've actually put 100-grams of weight on this bike to make it look better,'' Buckley said, an admission that you probably wouldn't hear from many company heads. ''We've got to this point where bikes are so crazy light and strong.''




Being a Knolly, the Fugitive was only ever going to get the FOURby4 layout that Buckley's used for all his bikes. Cue the ''Why does it have extra links?'' question that always pops up because, well, it looks like it has extra links, doesn't it? Buckley would argue that they're far from being ''extra,'' however, with this explanation scooped right from their website: ''It allows us to decouple the performance aspects of the rear suspension, which means we can fine-tune each bike to match its intended purpose. Put simply - the lower linkage controls the rear wheel axle path, and the upper linkage controls the shock progression.''

The Fugitive's suspension layout does get tweaked with a snip more anti-squat to improve its on-power performance, although that's not a phrase that Buckley is a big fan of: ''Yeah, it's got more anti-squat, but that's not a term I like. I think it's more complicated than that. Yeah, it has the best pedaling dynamics, but it still maintains traction.'' Traction has always been Knolly's calling card, and it's made most of his bikes incredibly adept technical climbers, but too much anti-squat only hurts that cause.




''We're learning how to evolve what's turned out to be an extremely versatile suspension platform,'' he said about one of the few dual-four-bar layouts on the market. ''I can make it work like any other design; I can put tons of pedal feedback and chain tension into it if I wanted to make it super snappy on pavement and in the parking lot, but we choose not to because we choose traction over that. If you have a huge increase in chainstay growth in a short amount of travel, that's where you get phenomenal pedaling performance on pavement, but it also destroys traction when you're traction-limited.''

Buckley has long-used the forward sitting, ultra-slack seat tube arrangement that he says is key to building a good 29er due to clearance challenges that come with big wheels, and we're now seeing that same thing pop up more and more as long-travel 29ers are the hot item right now.




''Geometry has involved; extended front-centers, and keeping the back-end short. A lot of that, and the 157mm rear-end is critical to that as well because it allows us to keep the chainstays really short,'' Buckley said of the wide hub spacing that he planned to employ two years ago, long before it was the norm. In fact, a major player in the drivetrain world straight-up asked him why he wanted to make a bike that didn't fit their parts.





Jump forward two years and 157mm hub spacing is potentially going to become the norm on the most forward-thinking frames. Buckley is thinking about the future: ''From my perspective, being an engineering person, if we're going to make this step to ditch the 135mm and 142mm rear-ends that have worked so well for so many years... I mean, I think you'd be hard pressed to tell Industry Nine that they can't build a 142mm, 29'' rear wheel strong enough, right? They'd probably call BS on that. But if we're going to make a step, why make a small step, and why not use something that already exists?''

The other numbers are modern, too, with a 477mm reach for my large-sized test bike that's incoming, an adjustable head angle via a two-position lower shock mount that goes from 65.25 to 66.5-degrees depending on the spec, and a tight 430.5mm rear-end.


''I don't believe in cheap carbon. We want high-end alloy and carbon, and our opinion is that a better-made bike is a better ride,'' Buckley replied when I asked how he was going to get around the fact that perception has carbon being the superior material. ''Forget what material is involved; the better alloy will ride way better, and be a better value, than a cheap carbon bike.''

So, would you consider a high-end aluminum frame instead of carbon for your next bike?

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